Dynamics
by xooxu
Summary: Your name is John Egbert. And of all the people you could have fallen in love with, you couldn't have picked a worse person. -hard slash, bondage, whips, sex toys, dubious consent, love-
1. Anything and Everything

**Summary: Your name is John Egbert. And of all the people you could have fallen in love with, you couldn't have picked a worse person.**

**Alternate Summary: You can't really stop to examine the dynamics of this relationship. You're too afraid of what you might find.**

**Warnings: Hard slash, bondage, whips, dubious consent, love.**

**&break&**

Your name is John Egbert. And of all the people you could have fallen in love with, you couldn't have picked a worse person.

"Ah… A-ah!" You wet your lips, grinding out the softest moan you can manage. He likes knowing when you're enjoying yourself. Which isn't exactly the easiest thing to tell, given the activities you two partake in. He doesn't like it when you talk, though, just noises. Not that you ever have great mental capability to speak anyway when he gets like this. "Nghh…"

His tongue toys at the skin just above the vibrating ring, pressing into the soft plastic. You pull a little harder at the bindings and let your hips lift away from the mattress of their own will. You're panting, but you feel light headed. You two have been at this for _hours_ and you don't know if you can last much longer. But every minute with him has you on edge, so you're pretty sure this has another couple of hours to go. His fingers are rubbing you teasingly in _just_ the right spot, and you know that if he let you, you would cum for hours on just that feeling. But he doesn't let you.

You two never sleep together. You've never even seen him naked.

"GOD!" You scream when he pushes his tongue roughly against the slit of your head in time with a violent rub of his fingers. It's almost too much, and the safe word bubbles up your throat, but you know he's getting off on this in ways you'll never be able to bring out in him on your own. You don't know why he never responds to you when you try to get him off, but he's rock hard in his jeans now, even if he doesn't do anything about that. So you'll take whatever this is.

Because you fell for him. Hard. The moment you saw him, you knew you were in trouble. You knew you would give him _whatever_ he needed.

You wish you could see him, drooling over your dick like it was candy, but the black cotton keeps him out of sight. You can't lie that the blindfold excites you, too, but some nights you just want to pretend you two are normal. You want to look into his eyes when you cum, to kiss him when your done, to hold an touch him back. But you tried that. He kissed you tenderly, and he did give you a mind-blowing hand job while you gasped into his ear, moaning his name. He even kissed you when you came, thrusting unabashedly into his hand. But when you opened your eyes and looked into his, his eyes looked so dead and dull. You didn't argue at all the next night when he held out the blindfold.

You arc off the bed, whining in a pitch higher than usual. It's your sign that you're close, even with the ring squeezing you. He stops immediately. Though you were expecting it, you can't help but whine and thrash in protest.

God, you're so far lost you actually complain, "No, no, ugh, no, please…" He presses himself against your bare thigh. Through the rough fabric and cold metal of the button, he's hard and you love that. He won't cum. At least not in front of you. You've never seen him orgasm. You imagine it's beautiful. But he always leaves after he _finally_ lets you cum, still hard, but otherwise, he looks unphased when he unties you and takes off your blindfold. You let yourself believe that he thinks of you when he masturbates, that he catalogues all these moments and uses them in private.

He presses a closed-mouth kiss against the corner of your mouth, chaste and quick. It means he's going to leave you for a moment, probably to find a toy from the box he keeps in your closet. It took you forever to figure out the patterns. Not that they tell very much, just that he feels apologetic for leaving you hanging. You don't really mind anymore. When you two had first begun this weird ritual, and everything set you so close to the edge, you couldn't handle it very well. These breaks would be agonizing. Now you use them to regroup for whatever came next.

You focus all the sense you still have to follow him around your room. The taste of his kiss left on your lips, the sift of the fabric of his clothes against your skin as he slides off you, the dip and rise of the bed as he gets out of it, the smell of him and his cologne lingering around you, the sound of his footsteps as he walks to the closet, the sound of the sliding door, the cardboard box being pulled out and opened. You try to guess what items he pulls out from the sound, but it's all too vague. The best you can do is recognize the sound of a vibrator being turned, perhaps accidentally, before quickly shutting off.

He comes back to you, kneels over you and hovers there. You're pretty sure he's watching you. You can almost feel his stare gliding over your body. You lick your lips impatiently. He kisses you deeply with a low chuckle. Like almost everything else he does, the kiss takes your breath away. He doesn't waste time working his way into your mouth. He tastes like you, you and mint toothpaste. You can't help but smile into it.

He presses the toy into your stomach, and you recognize the vibrator immediately. It's big, but nothing you can't handle for him. It's also curved specifically for men, so that it presses against your prostate naturally. You moan your approval into his mouth.

He pulls back and you hear the cap of the lube pop open. He's already prepped you, and you feel a bit of anxiety hit you as you wait for him to finish lubing the toy. You feel it dissipate with the familiar feel of him nudging your legs wider.

"Relax," he murmurs, and you can't help but melt. You love him.

The vibrator presses against your entrance toyingly for only a moment, before he pushes it in just an inch. It stretches you wider than you were prepared, but you like it. You know that the slight pain with disappear very soon, but more than that, you associate this feeling with him. He doesn't waste time getting it in place. You let out a soft groan when it's fully seated in you, the bottom end of the dildo pressing against the base of your testicles.

He kisses you again before he turns it on. Your body convulses. "Oh god, oh god, oh my god, oh godddd." You repeat this mindless mantra like your life depends on it, dragging it out when, in your writhing, the vibrations rub against you harder.

He retreats. You lose him in these minutes, where the pleasure destroys your thought process and you can't follow him around the room. For all you know, he might leave and make a sandwich, leaving you to arc and thrash about on the bed by yourself. It goes on for ages with you wrapped up in your own world, before he pulls you out of it by pulling it out of you without warning. He manages to still your cry of frustration with a deep and distracting kiss. He must have used that time to go digging through the box again, because he presses another toy against your hip. You can't place it at first, you're too distracted by the kiss. But he breaks it, and presses it harder against your bony side to get your attention again.

"Is this okay?" He whispers to your lips. It's a … oh god. It's a whip, you think, as you place the long, smooth shape and cold leather, wrapped up in his hand. It's small, and designed to not leave lasting marks. It's something you've never done before, and you don't really know if you are okay with it. But you've never said no to him before.

"Wh-where …?"

"On your thigh."

You lick your lips to stall. You're going to say yes. You always say yes. You love him so much.

"Y-yeah," you say, breathless. He presses another chaste kiss against your mouth, but it doesn't settle your stomach as much as it usually does. Before you can even think too much about it, he's pulling away, lifting your right leg at the knee, pressing it against your chest, exposing the soft back of your thigh.

You hold your breath, not sure what to expect now. You're tensed for the blow, but it doesn't come for the longest time, although his hand is still firmly pressed against your knee, holding you there. Instead of the whip, he presses a kiss against your knee. It lingers.

Under the cloth of the blindfold, your close your eyes, and you let go of a breath you hadn't even realized you'd been holding.

"Fuck!" You hiss at the pain blooming across you thigh, just above the joint of your leg and your ass. It _hurts_. But he's pressing feather light kisses down your leg as he brings the leather down again against your leg, this time higher and closer to your knee. "Ergh!" You groan, trying to shift away from the stinging pain. It leaves a residual burn behind, and you know it'll leave big angry welts. You don't know how you're going to sit normally for a week. The safe word is slipping off your tongue, "J- Ja- …"

But your can't bring yourself to say it. He's hard-pressed against your other leg, and he's started murmuring encouragements into the crook of your groin between kisses. "You're doing so well. God, John. You don't know what it looks like."

So you grit your teeth and bare it through another ten lashes. Because you're in love with him.

When he finally lets go of your thigh, you're only hard because of the ring, but its lost some length, and you're panting harshly. The pain only barely subsides with the absence of the whip, and when you try to put it down on the sheets, each and every mark burns as bad a lash.

"Shit!" you hiss, strained as you jerk your leg up again, away from the mattress. He takes your leg gently again, this time pressing a kiss against the raised line closest to the back of your knee.

"Thank you for that." He says against your skin. The sincerity in his voice soothes enough of the pain to make it worth it. You feel his other hand reach for something on the bed, hear another pop of a bottle cap opening. "This will help," he says as something cold and very forgiving to the burn presses against the welt his mouth was just at. You sigh immediately.

He dresses each welt with the ointment, pressing a kiss to each one before he does so. When he's finished, he turns off and removes the vibrating ring, taking you in his hand. He builds you up quickly again, before taking you into his mouth. You're so wound up that it only takes two more pumps and a hard suck to finish you off. You only let go of a weak sigh as your hips twitch up into his mouth. He swallows everything.

You're tired, and even though that salve took care of the worst of the sting, it left behind a muscle deep ache. You're going to be bruised on top of everything. He helps you lower your leg so that it's propped up at an angle, before undoing the bindings tying you to the headboard. He takes off your blindfold last, smiling down at you before you lean up to kiss him.

"See you tomorrow?" you ask. He moves to clean up the toys, wiping them off with disinfectant wipes, and putting all of it in the box.

"Yeah." He puts the box back in the closet, sliding the door closed behind him.

"Good night, Dirk."

"Night, John." He presses a kiss against your forehead. Then he leaves you.

Your name is John Egbert. And you fell in love with Dirk Strider.

**&break&**

**a/n: I've had this idea in my head the past couple of days. I think it was a dream first, but I don't remember now. I didn't think I was going to write it, but it just sort of popped out.**

**I've noticed that a lot of Dirk/John or Bro/John is mainly noncon or rape, and I wanted to make it more of a relationship. Although, I don't think this by itself conveys what I mean, but I really do imagine them with more meat to their story than just kink.**

**I actually really want to make this a chapter story, but I feel comfortable leaving it as a oneshot, too. If I don't make it a full on story, I'll at least make a corresponding oneshot about Dirk's view on this relationship. If I do finish the story, I don't think it'll really have a happily ever after, though. I'm in the mood to break some hearts.**

**Hoped you guys enjoyed! Please review! :D**


	2. Permanent Marks

**Summary: Your name is John Egbert, and of all the people you could have fallen in love with, you couldn't have picked a worse person.**

**Alternative Summary: You really can't stop to examine the dynamics of this relationship. You're too afraid of what you won't find.**

**Warnings: Not much for this chapter. Piercings.**

**&break&**

The door's ajar when you make it back to your room at around ten at night. It makes your heart jump just a little.

The light's off as you push your way in and drop bag of video games you took with you to Dave's room. You and Dave never know what you want to play until you get there, so carrying the big duffel around is actually the most convenient way to go about it.

Dirk's there, sitting on your bed, so cool and nonchalant, even though you think that waiting by himself in the dark for how long should be a little bit awkward, or maybe romantic in some way. It _should_ be emotional. But Dirk is flipping through his phone with such an attractive casual lean, the blue lighting up his face and glasses, that he gives the act his figurative poker-face.

"Hey."

Dirk doesn't look up. "Hey."

You don't bother turning on the light. The door barely clicks behind you and you've already started shedding your shirt.

Your eyes haven't adjusted, so when the light from Dirk's phone disappears, you're blind. It's a familiar feeling that sends a spark of excitement up your spine. You don't know if Dirk does this sort of thing on purpose, this sort of teasing, or if coincidences plus your own wishful projections just fake you out into believing whatever it is you need to believe. Because you need to believe something about Dirk.

You imagine he's watching you as you kick off your shoes. Your fingers toy at the buckle of your belt, but you wonder what the rush is. A different set of fingers loop into the leather of the belt. Dirk tugs you up against him.

"How're you feeling?" he whispers into your ear. You're pretty sure he's talking about the welts still sore on the back of your right thigh.

"Okay..." You murmur this to the crook of his neck and plant a weird sort of lingering kiss. You let go of your belt completely, your hands finding a place in the fabric of his t-shirt, as he undoes your buckle, pulling it out slowly loop by loop. "A little tender," you admit.

"I sort of guessed. Did you use more of that stuff?" The ointment he put on it last night. You reapplied it this morning, and later in the day, too.

"Yeah." Dirk's hands are undoing your button, opening your zipper. This is nothing new to you, but it's still distracting how close he is, how nice he smells. Already, you've closed your eyes and let your other senses see him for you. It's a game you play with yourself, like captchaloguing these sensations and giving each one an image. His lips and soft tongue tease at your jaw as he slowly tugs your jeans down by his thumbs. You hum approval.

He spins you disorienting unexpectedly and you're lying back down on the bed all of the sudden. Dirk doesn't attack you like you think he would, just takes a few slow steps to where you're lying. Your eyes have finally adjusted, and you can barely make out his silhouette creeping closer. He's fucking with you.

You love it.

"I'm feeling adventurous tonight," he says when he finally reaches the bed, his knees bumping yours dangling off the bed. "Do you feel up for it?"

You laugh a little breathlessly. "What do you call every other night?"

"Every other night. This won't be every other night. If you're okay with that, that is."

You have no idea what he could be talking about. The box in your closet can only be so big, what else can he be hiding in there? You can't deny that you're curious to say the least, if a little aroused already at the concept of something new. "Adventurous, how?"

He kneels on the bed, leaning down over you. He stops about six inches from your face. He's got his glasses on still, so you can't see his eyes, but you look back and forth from lens to lens, trying to see past the tinted glass. He kisses you softly, which is unusual, but not at all unwelcome. "I have this ... thing. I haven't pulled it out yet, because I didn't know how you would react. But I want to show you, before we put the blindfold on."

A wave of anxiety hits your gut like a punch. This sounds ... serious. Like, worse than whipping. What if you have to say no. Would you? Would you be able to make yourself say no?

If you were in a different relationship, would you even have to ask yourself that? You honestly can't answer any of those questions. "Should ... I be nervous?"

Dirk smiles at you a little crookedly. "Maybe. I don't know. You can say no, you know."

You don't know. You know _that_ for sure. "Yeah, I know. Well, let's see it."

He kisses you chastely before pushing off the bed. You sit up to watch him in the dim light go the closet and get the box out. He sets it on the floor. You've never seen the inside of it. You never even touch except when you have to get to the first aid box you put underneath it. All the times it's ever been opened before, you were blindfolded and tied to your bedpost.

You don't change anything tonight. You can't see into the box from this angle, and you make to move to change your vantage. He rifles around in it for a second before grabbing something small. You don't get a chance to see what it is before he's already putting the lid back on and making his way to the bed. He sits next to you. Your curiosity almost gets the better of you, but force yourself not to ask what's tucked away in his palm when he kisses you. A few seconds later, he licks your bottom lip, and you let him into your mouth, closing your eyes. It's a great distraction, and you almost forget about wherever tonight is about to lead, before he pulls back abruptly. You blink your eyes open hazily. Dirk's hands found their way to your chest and stomach during the kiss, and you just now realize he's pressing something cold and smooth to the flat of your stomach.

"What ... what is that?" you have to ask him, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. He pulls it back and holds it up for you to see.

You're honestly completely confused for a minute. It's a skinny metal bar with two balls on either end. It looks like a ...

"Oh. Oh..." You say when you realize that Dirk is holding up a bar, like one for your tongue. "_Ohhh._"

He wants to put it in _your_ tongue.

"Oh?" Dirk asks. You must have an amusing expression on your face right now, but you can't be bothered to school it, because you're still trying to process the small piece of metal in between Dirk's fingers.

"Oh," you reply. This would be the first permanent anything you've ever done with Dirk, besides perhaps losing your virginity, if you count that. But this is different. Everyone would be able to see this. Everyone already knows about you and Dirk, more or less, but this ... this would be different.

You'd be changing yourself. Are you willing to change who you are, physically, like this? For Dirk?

Of course you are. You love him.

"Will it bleed much?" You ask him. He smiles a little.

"Not really. But you'll probably drool all over the place. It'll hurt a little too. Unless you've got something to numb it?"

"Not really. Ice?"

"Do you want me to go get some?"

"... No," you decide, "Have you ever done this before?"

"On my nipple," Dirk tells you, "when I was thirteen."

You wouldn't know that. It makes you a little sad that you've never seen it. "Can I look?"

Dirk looks at you for a moment, before peeling off his shirt.

Half-naked Dirk is a very attractive thing, you realize suddenly. You've always known he was in shape, but you didn't guess this well defined. Your eyes catch on a pale, pale blond trail of hair, sneaking down into his boxers from his belly button. You let your gaze move slowly up, over every line and curve. You're drawn to his left nipple, dusty pink and pierced with a small and unassuming silver curved bar. The piercing looks even and pretty professional to you. Not that you really know how a piercing should look, but it at least looks healthy, like it didn't get infected, or he didn't freak out half way through.

It looks ... nice. You have an urge to lick it.

So you do. You lean forward and wrap your tongue around the warm ring. You don't expect him to react, really. He never has before, not when you stuck your hand down his pants and felt him cautiously, reading his face for any form of encouragement. You ended up withdrawing it after a couple minutes of awkward groping at a limp member. You still can't help wrapping your teeth around the metal ball and giving it a small tug.

When you pull back, you wish you had removed Dirk's glasses first, because you can't read him at all. He looks exactly the same. You can't say you're surprised at all, though.

"So, just to be perfectly clear, that's a yes?"

You trouble your bottom lip a bit. "Yeah. That's a yes."

"Okay. There's some more stuff I have to grab, if you want me to do this right."

You can't think of anything to say, so you just wait patiently as he digs through the box again. He returns with a clamp that has two rings on the end, a thick needle, disinfectant wipes, and a lighter.

"Where do you get this stuff from?"

"I had all of the piercing kit before, in my house. The other stuff I make from the captchacodes."

"What's the lighter for?" you ask. You didn't know it was in there.

He's wiping the clamp down when he answers. "Sterilization. To prevent infection. Stick your tongue out." You shift everything to get more comfortable. Your legs wrap under you, and you stick your hands between your thighs to keep them still. You sit up straighter and stick your tongue out. Dirk plants a kiss on the side of your mouth, then warns you, "Keep as still as possible."

He takes his glasses off then. You've seen his eyes before, but not often. It's still a bit of a shock how orange they are, even in the gray of the dim room. They concentrate with so much dedication on your outstretched tongue. It's almost fun to watch him work. He positions the clamp over your tongue, readjusting twice before he's satisfied. He leaves it hanging off your tongue, and you start to drool from how your mouth is forced open. Neither of you care too much, really. Dirk takes the needle and the lighter, flicking the flame to life and running the thin metal rod through it until he's satisfied. Then he sanitizes the bar and sets that aside on your nightstand. He kills the light and focuses on the clamp and your tongue again.

"Relax, okay? It'll be nothing compared to Noir."

You laugh a little, a very awkward and muffled sound, before he's pressing the sharp end to your tongue. The spot the clamp is circling has become a little numb from how the rings cut off the blood flow. You still feel the initial prick, though.

He drags it out, you think. It doesn't hurt as much as you thought it would, but you can feel it break each layer of the muscle, almost hear the wet pops as the flesh gives, until finally he says softly, "Almost done, now. Stay perfectly still." He grabs the bar, unscrewing the bottom ball, and positions it over the needle. It slides in, pushing the needle out. He screws the ball into the other side.

"There." The clamp releases your tongue, and you wiggle it a little before pulling it back in your mouth to get the weird dry feeling off of it. The bar feels weird, and fits strangely in you mouth.

"Feethz wierb ..." you try to say, but you have a hard time making your tongue work right. Dirk just smiles.

"Lemme see." You stick your tongue out, flicking it up and down to show him both sides. "Sexy," he purrs. He presses his lips against your and asks, "Do you want to try it out?"

You kiss him, licking into his mouth. The kiss is sloppy, since your tongue won't react quite the same, but Dirk doesn't seem to mind at all. He full out moans when you rub the ball up against the sensitive underside of his tongue.

He presses you back against the bed. The blindfold and rope are always in your nightstand, since those are used every night. He breaks the kiss to tie you down, double knotting the rough tweed rope. You give it a tug for good measure. The blindfold is soft as always.

You're blind again for the second time this night because of Dirk.

You sort of want to tell him you love him. Right now.

You almost, _almost_ do.

**&break&**

**a/n: I had to stop there. I wasn't up for writing a whole other sex scene again atm; they're really exhausting, to be honest. The next chapter should have both sex and more characters (not engaged in sex, btw).**

**So, I usually don't like to put review replies in the actual chapters, but I got an anon review that I'd like to respond to. So I guess I'll just put them all here, right?**

**JayPay: Laa~ I'm flattered, thank you! I'm glad you liked, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story! Thanks!**

**anon: Teehee, thank you! If you're looking for more hard stuff like this, the pairing Karkat/Gamzee turns up a surprising number! I can suggest some actual stories if you'd like. Just leave another review. And about that safe-word~ ... It's a secret~! :D You'll find out later, and I don't want to give anything away. Also kudos for picking up on how John never says Dirk loves him back. It was intentionally left there. It's another plot point I'll hopefully bring up again. C:**

**ILuvBakuraRyouChibi: : {D Thank you! And like I told anon, the safe-word's a secret for now! :D Teehee. And I'm hoping to get a oneshot from Dirk's POV in here, too sometime. I'm thinking I'm going to write a sequel if the story goes the way I've got it mapped out currently that will be from Dirk's POV.**

**Also, I want some opinions. I have the idea that all of this is happening after Homestuck is pretty much over, and everyone is just living together. But I don't really want to make up a theory on the end of homestuck and who lives through it and how they all end up however they end up. So it would be simpler to make this an AU, right?**

**My dilemma is that I want Davesprite to be a major character in the story. Like, _major. _Would anyone be horribly offended if I just sort of glanced over their living situation and the entire background story? Or does anyone have a good AU idea that can include both Dave and Davesprite? I left the past two chapters pretty vague setting wise for a reason.**

**On a different note, while the idea of piercing just came to me while I was writing, I remembered after I was done that I read this in a Dave/Tavros fanfic called 'Mark Me' by the very lovely and talented Querel. So I might have been subconsciously influenced? Either way, it's very much recommended reading. Fic: _fanfiction [dot] net/s/8079492/1/Mark_Me_**

**Thanks so much for reading! Review if you would, pretty please~! : {D**


	3. Things Old and Things New

**Chapter Summary: "Relax," he tells your lips. Strangely enough, you do. The tension in your shoulders and your back loosens, and your fears about all of this don't go away completely, but they don't seem as bad. He pulls back from your mouth and presses a kiss to your ear. "I'll talk you through this," he whispers.**

**Warnings: masturbation and vague-ish oral sex. **

* * *

You wake up the next morning with a headache pounding behind your eyes, ten stinging welts on the back of your leg, and a puddle of drool on your pillow where the bar and swelling kept your mouth open. You're, of course, alone as you sit up and rub the barbell against the roof of your mouth, not at all used to the sensation, even though it brings back the memory of it fumbling around in Dirk's mouth, and the way he moaned each time.

You groan aloud as the memory messes with your body and suddenly your getting hard. "Fuck," you tell yourself (but it comes out more like "fug" than anything), falling back on the bed and rubbing your face with both palms. You hate how easily your body responds to anything. You guess you were kind of a late bloomer when it came to your sex drive, and even though you're becoming desensitized because of all the nights you're spending with Dirk, you still can't help but get turned on whenever you think about it too long.

You're still naked from last night, and in fact, you're a horrible, gross mess. You'll have to throw your sheets in the wash again today, you think as you separate part of it from your stomach. You slide your hand under the white cotton and lightly grip yourself. You close your eyes and run the pad of your thumb over the tip, scraping the slit with your blunt nail. You have to bite your lip to keep from moaning. It sends tremors of pleasure up and down your back, causes your neck and ears to flush. Behind your closed lids, you can see Dirk, during one of the first times you came because of him, running his hand down your chest and stomach. He leans over and kisses your neck, nips at your ear as he takes you in his hand. You gasp out loud, moving your hand quickly to fuel the fantasy.

It's not at all like how Dirk would touch you. He wouldn't rush. He wouldn't even give you what you wanted. But you just want to get this over with, not drag it out, no matter how intense Dirk can make you feel. Even when he's not there.

His hand squeezes you gently, drawing out a low breathy moan that you hide into the pillow as best you can. The fantasy is vivid; you can feel his mouth on your neck, gliding over your collarbone, down your chest to the flat of your stomach. His tongue dips into your navel just as his grip tighten and his motions speed up.

You buck your hips into your fist at the thought. Your movements are designed to make this quick. The twisting of your wrist, the quick, precise motions, you aren't going to last long at all. Your breath is already coming out is desperate gasps, and little beads of pre-cum slide down your head.

As you get close, the fantasy dissolves into little more than Dirk's hand, Dirk's mouth, Dirk, Dirk, oh _fuck_- Dirk!

You bite his name back, but a loud groan still worms its way out past your clenched teeth when you finish.

You wipe your hand off on the thoroughly soiled sheets and wonder why you can't feel sated or relaxed like masturbation is supposed to make you feel. Instead, your head is heavy and everything that hurt before _hurts_ now.

**&break&**

Davesprite laughs when you open your mouth for him, wiggling your obscenely swollen tongue around to give him a view of all angles. He's floating in front of you at a silly, unnecessarily high angle to look into your mouth. He's probably only doing it to mock you more. "H-holy shit, bro," he laughs at you, reaching a hand out dangerously close to your sore tongue. You snap you mouth closed, careful to leave your tongue in one piece, and play-biting at his fingers. "How'd you get caught up in that junk?" He glides back to where he abandoned his cereal on the counter. "Actually, knowing you two, I probably don't want to know..."

"It's not a crazy story, Dave. He just asked if I was up for it." Or well, that's what you try to say. _Ith noh a crathy thory, Dabe. Ee juth athged ..._ You've been practicing with your new tongue bar all morning. You're pretty sure that when the swelling goes down, you'll be able to talk normally, but right now you're having a really hard time with consonants. You pop the ice cube back in your mouth to help with the swelling, but it doesn't help all that much with the tenderness.

Somehow, Davesprite understands you well enough, responding around a mouth full of cheerios and banana slices, "N'whah? Ya' jus sehd yah? Di'ya ev'n thing 'bout t'fore ya wheh 'long wih ih? "

Even your best look of disdain barely grazes his bright orange feathers, but you still wait until he clears his mouth of food before continuing. "Yeah, I mean, of course I _thought_ about it, but I didn't, like, stop and deliberate over it. It's not really that big of a deal."

Davesprite gives you a look, the look, that you're so familiar with, it almost makes you sick. You don't want to deal with this, with another lecture from him about your relationship with Dirk. "Isn't it, though? Just a little? Can you honestly say that before last night you ever even thought about getting a tongue piercing in your life?"

You hate how he feels like he has the ability to comment on whatever you and Dirk do together. At first, you thought it was maybe because Davesprite felt weirded out that you were doing it with a younger version of the man that raised him, but you know now that neither Davesprite nor Dave think of Dirk as their Bro. There are times, though, when everyone on the meteor hangs out, that Dirk and Dave seem to share private jokes that no one else can even comprehend, like they just understand each other better than anyone who's only know the other for little over a year should.

But still, for whatever reason, Davesprite vehemently disapproves of you and Dirk. You're pretty sure that Dave does, too, but you two hardly talk anymore.

Right now, though, your headache's spread from behind your eyes to the back of your neck, and even though your leg is better than it was yesterday, the ointment only helps the bruising so much. Not to mention your frustration with your sore tongue. You think about telling Davesprite to shove it and about running back to your room, or maybe even back to your old house, if you can find Jade (it has been a while since you saw it), but you know. You know you're not a kid anymore, and you know that all of that is childish. And you're kind of tired of being childish.

"Dave, I know you're just trying to look out for me or whatever, but can we just not talk about it right now. I promise that he's not the evil villain, twirling his moustache while he corrupts my innocence or whatever you think he's doing. I can say no." That last part was a lie, but it's mostly true. You do believe that, if Dirk ever asked you to do anything so terrible you would have to say no, that you could.

Davesprite heaves a sigh, but you know he's let it slide for now when he waves it off with an "Okay, fine, whatever, princess, quit PMSing." He takes another gulp of his cereal before he starts to giggle. "We have to do something about how swollen your tongue is, though. You sound worse than '_Thollukth_.'"

"Why's John's tongue swollen?" Terezi asks as she walks in with Karkat in tow.

Davesprite laughs harder now. "John got a tongue piercing," he rats you out immediately. You send him a threatless glare, but it's not like you mind all that much. Everyone on the meteor will probably know sooner or later.

"A what? You stabbed your tongue, you dumb asshat?" Karkat asks you.

You explain the whole thing to both of them, and apparently piercings in Trollian are called face wounds, which sound much cooler to you and Davesprite. Terezi, through the whole story, appeared to love the idea of one in her tongue.

"Do you think Dirk could give _me _one?"

You shrug. You don't know much about what it takes to give someone a tongue piercing, or what the differences between a human and troll tongue are. It seemed quick and simple to you, but you would have to ask Dirk. You tell her as much.

"What. Why the fuck would you put a face wound in your tongue? That's like, the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You can't even see it unless you stick your fucking tongue out. You'd have to walk around with your tongue perpetually in the air for it to do you any good."

You and Terezi catch eyes (or, well, you catch her red shades, and she must smell you looking or something) but either way, yeah, she totally know what the benefits are. Her eyebrows waggle suggestively, but in an over-the-top way that makes you laugh out loud. She leans over and whispers something in Karkat's ear that you can't make out, but can make a fairly educated guess what it was about when Karkat's cool gray skin warms to a nice dull pink, and the tip of his ears are practically apple red.

You look over at Davesprite, who's been very blasé while eating his cheerios. You're about to apologize to him, albeit insincerely, for the turn that the conversation took, but you can't not notice that he's staring at Terezi. Just about everyone else on the meteor, except for you and Jade, would have missed the slight yellowing of his cheeks that leave his skin a perfect sunny color beneath his orange shades.

You sometimes forget about how Davesprite fell in love with Terezi. He hides it so well.

You guess it was inevitable. They're both coolkids. They would fit together so well, you think. Davesprite's bad art, and Terezi's unironic love of horrible color coordination, their almost identical love of terrible internet memes. You don't know why you didn't realize it at the first stages. Maybe because you and him hadn't really been all that close?

Maybe because Terezi has never really held a conversation with Davesprite for longer than ten minutes.

You heard from Rose that Dave and Terezi had dated for years on the meteor, while you and Davesprite and Jade were on the ship. You never actually saw them together, but you pieced together enough of the hints the Rose pitied you with. They were pretty much perfect together, but something about Gamzee being Terezi's hate-boyfriend ruined their relationship. You get that troll have multiple quadrants and different types of relationships. It makes a lot of sense, just like how you have ... whatever you have with Dirk, and then something platonic and completely different with Rose, and then something familial and close with Jade. You interact with and love and care for them all, all at the same time, but in entirely different ways that are capable of coexisting together. Trolls just have more defined relationships to fill.

But, and Rose never really went into specifics about any aspect of Dave or Terezi's relationships on the meteor, and Terezi and Karkat were already dating when you all met up again in the post-scratch version of the game, and you never talked to Terezi about it, so you have no idea what her views of Davesprite's crush on her is. If she even recognizes it.

Although, if you were pressed for honesty, you don't know how someone could be in a relationship with a person for years, and not be able to see the signs of a crush from what is, in all practicality, that same person. But you, of all people, won't be the one to press the subject. Not any time soon.

**&break&**

The television/theater room was hallowed out of some miscellaneous corridor that had been in the meteor before the Trolls had started living on it, however long ago that was. Currently, you're the only one in it, bored out of your mind. You don't even have the giant screen turned on, you're just fucking around with your laptop on the long couch, your headphones in and some of Dave's music playing on Spotify.

You feel like bored is a perpetual state of being on the meteor. Hell, it's been that way since your thirteenth birthday, just with brief interruptions of excitement tossed into the mix. You're used to it, now, though. Better at handling it nowadays than you were two years ago, or four years ago, or maybe even your whole life. You've found ways to deal with it in the months where you had no direction, after the end of the game and you were just ... existing.

At first, you though you should pick up pranking again. Those weeks seemed fun at first, laughing at the expense of others. You were never mean about your jokes, just funny and a little annoying, and the others put up with your antics for the most part. (Karkat was probably the only one that threw a fit at all, to be honest.) But quickly, too quickly, you realized how ... childish it was, and how it didn't feel the same as it did when you were a kid.

After that you picked up the piano again. When you were a younger, you knew you had some talent for it, but now, with little else to do, you really threw yourself into it. You even started composing your own stuff. Rose and you recently started composing accompaniment pieces jointly, and Dave's asked you for some pieces that he's mixed into his songs. You taught Davesprite how to play in your spare time, too, but you both admit that he's better at mixing than instrumental.

Besides music, you like to try your hand at coding. You are still terrible at it, but you can make your own video games now. Terezi loves them. You think it has something to do with the scent of the colors you choose, not so much with the gameplay, but you appreciate her patronage anyway.

Not that any of you require patronage. You are all richer with boondollars and grist than any of you know what to do with.

"Yo, Egderp."

You successfully flip the laptop out of your lap and onto the ground while you thoroughly flip the _freak_ out. Dave lets go of your headphones and laughs as he slides over the back of the couch. Jade is standing behind him with a stern look on her face.

"Sorry about that John, but me and the lady are about to enjoy a fine ass piece of filmography and were wondering if your derpy rear-end would care to join us in our viewing pleasure."

Dear _lord_, are you glad that Davesprite grew out of that phase pretty quickly after he heard Dave talk.

"Shit, fuck, what movie?" you respond, collecting the laptop from the ground and inspecting it for any damage.

He laughs even harder at what is left of your temporary speech impediment. The swelling has gone down tremendously in the past few hours, but there is still some noticeable trouble. Your lisp is only just barely there, but Dave of course caught on to it. "Oh man, Derpbert, what's up with your _lithp._"

"It's a long story. What movie?"

"The most fantastical of sick rhymes, of course."

After a beat in which Dave offers no more information, you begrudgedly ask, "Which would be ...?" You look to Jade for help, but she shrugs and shakes her head.

"'The Lorax.' And not that dumbass one the Dirk pirated from the future or whatever. But like, the original, heart and soul, twisted as fuck guilt-trip."

"The what?"

"You know, Dr. Seuss, fluffy orange ball of none-of-your-bullshit? 'Speaks for the trees?'"

"Dude, why the fuck would I know what that is? Why are you even watching Dr. Seuss?"

"Fucker be, like, the king of slam poetry."

"What. _What._ That's ridiculous."

"Like you're one to talk. You had a full-blown man crush on Nic Cage until you were 15."

"I also read 'Cat in the Hat' books until I was six, but then I grew up!"

"Whatever, John, your boyfriend watches '_My Little Pony_.' My. Little. Pony. Dude. There is nothing to even be gleaned from that. That is like, the lowest of the lows when it comes to ironic childish likes. It's nothing but obnoxious little girl voices and pastel colors!"

He's still talking, but you aren't really paying attention. You just roll your eyes and tune him out. You feel kind of bad for Jade. You two used to be really close, but ever since she and Dave started dating (which, in your opinion, happened way too quickly, but you really, really can't dole out relationship advice without winning the award for universe's largest hypocritical dipshit), you can't seem to hang out with her without Dave tagging along. So you stopped making much of an effort. You think it was to spare her from these sorts of spats between Dave and you.

You talked to her, once, about it. She said she didn't get why he bothered you so much. _"He's the exact same. Weren't you afraid that things would be different? You're the one that's different." _

"_Yeah, but we were just really such dumb little kids? I dunno. Talking with him and his 'ironic burns' and realizing that he really hasn't changed at all, despite losing everything that mattered ... It just makes me remember what a little dick I was back then. And I guess I'm still a dick, but, I dunno. I want to feel like I've matured as well as I could have going through all of that." You were in her room, for once without Dave. You don't really know why you started this feelings jam, but it did really need to happen._

_She sighed, laid back on the bed. She always seems too fed up to deal with your nonsense. Maybe that's part of why you stopped pranking. "But you said it. You're still being a dick. You're just being more elitist about it. You still hide behind your nit-picking and sarcasm. He's hiding behind irony and wit."_

"_I don't know Jade. Maybe it's only because, when we were on the boat for _three years_, I guess ... I just built our friendship up in my head? We were best bros, and I guess I only knew him through computers. I never actually met him, just chats and the occasional Skype or whatever. Even on my birthday, I met you and at least saw Rose a couple times. But me and Dave, we never really crossed paths. So, I think seeing him in person just scared me away from him." You sunk into one of the squiddle beanbag chairs she had piled up instead of a couch in the middle of the floor in front of her tv. _

"_Look. I get tired of his bullshit, too. And I get that we were all just stupid kids who got into way more than we could handle, but you shouldn't hate yourself for it. And you shouldn't be taking it out on Dave. He's not you-as-a-dumb-thirteen-year-old personified, and you shouldn't project that onto him."_

_She stopped talking, then, but she rolled over and gave you a look. She was chewing over what she wanted to say. "John ... I think that Dave doesn't realize that you have a problem with him. It's really obvious to everyone else, but I think he just thinks that when you argue with him, it's like you're being sarcastic, or like a best friend fight or something. But he's started to notice that you guys don't see each other anymore. Maybe you should talk to him. Either to tell him how you feel, or ask him what his deal is? I don't think that, with how small our world is right now, you can afford to try to let the friendship die off naturally. Nip it in the bud, or work out your issues."_

You haven't talked to her about it since. And you never took her advice to talk to Dave. You don't know what he thinks about how little you see him.

Dave is still ranting about Dirk and his obsession with Rainbow Bright, and Jade glares at you. You guess that's fair. You did pretty much start this fight, or argument, or whatever this would be. You sigh, as Dave starts pointing out how silly "My Little Pony" is and how it can't compare to the life lessons that "his man, the Seuss" teaches. You sigh, and you cut him off.

"Dave. Dave. _Dave. _I'm sorry. You're right. You're allowed to like some things for fun. I've never seen 'The Lorax.' I'd be happy to watch it." You sound a little deadpan, and less sincere than you were trying for, but Jade's face contorts into a pleasant surprise all the same.

Dave is left with his mouth open, sort of mid-gibe. You honestly have no idea what he'll think from that statement, or if he'll blow it off with some sort of burns about how you gave up the fight on the losing side of the battle, but at least he stopped talking about Dirk and ponies. His shades, the ones you gave him some four years ago now, are blocking his eyes, and you don't know him all that well to tell what he's thinking from his other features.

Instead of gibes, he closes his mouth, just as unreadable, and grabs the remote. He sets up the movie, strangely silent. While he's focused on of the screen, you throw Jade a confused look. She notices, but she just gives you her own concerned confusion back.

When Dave gets the movie started, and some old cartoon animation starts rolling across the screen, you all nestle down to watch quietly, but you don't pay all that much attention. Instead, you think about what Dave was talking about. About how Dirk _likes_ "My Little Pony." You didn't know that. You've been in his room once or twice, but not for very long. You maybe remember that there were a bunch of horse posters. Did you see a picture of Rainbow Bright? You can't remember.

It hits you that you don't know much of anything about Dirk at all.

**&break&**

You're playing tetris on your phone when the door opens. You smile down at the screen, but you're on too good of a tetris roll to look up. The door closes, and there's a moment of silence. You listen for him, but it sounds like he's just standing there in front of the door. It gives your shivers to think that he's just looking at you.

You're on your couch, sitting cross-legged and hunched over the phone. You might be making faces of concentration as you furiously work the colored shapes, you don't know. You do that when you play the piano, Davesprite's told you.

You think about the piano. You'd like to play with Dirk. That would be nice.

The long skinny one gets stuck between some of the hooked ones, blocking at least three rows from easily filling. You curse to yourself.

The phone disappears from your hands, and it catches you off guard. You make an embarrassing noise of complaint as you grab after it, but Dirk holds your shoulder back. He moves the phone out of your reach, and looks at it. You let off a little humph.

You all but gasp as he tosses the thing over his shoulder. "What the fuck?"

But he's leaning over you and the couch suddenly, right knee resting against the cushion and using his leverage on your shoulder to push you back against the back rest.

"I was thinking about your tongue piercing all day." His voice is sultry and low against your ear in a way you don't hear often. You melt immediately and thoroughly at the words.

"R-really?" You gasp. You feel a little breathless and light headed.

"Mm-hmm." He hums against your neck.

Oh god oh god. You want to touch him, to kiss him heavily and you want ... you want ...

He kisses you, and you're a little over-eager. You open your mouth as soon as you feel his lips, and he chuckles softly. But he concedes, pressing open mouth kisses to your lips. You force your tongue into his mouth, pressing the ball of the piercing against his tongue. You can feel the moan against your mouth more than you can hear it.

His breath is quicker and there's a lightly pink tone to his cheeks when you break the kiss. You look at his glasses, and you don't know if his eyes are open. You think about taking them off, but you'll let him do that tonight if he wants.

"How does your leg feel today?"

You smile at him. "Good. Better." You look down at the bandaging you wrapped it in under your boxers. You wanted to keep it from brushing against your jeans and bothering you more. But it really does feel better, only the bruises left now.

"Good, he says, pressing his mouth and nose to your jaw. You close your eyes and focus on just that feeling. "How about your tongue? I heard it was really swollen this morning."

You wonder how that got back to him. Maybe through the Trolls? Or if Jade or Dave told Rose, she talks to Roxy a lot. But really, for some reason, all of the kids from your world don't really talk to the kids from the scratch.

"Hah, yeah. You should have heard me this morning. '_Hi, thith ith John. Yeth, yeth, 'ow are you?'_ It was pretty bad."

He smiles a little before you can just barely catch his eyebrows press together. "Does it still hurt?"

"Not really, no. Just awkward feeling. It hurt when I brushed it, but I found out that's because I'm a dumbass and you're not suppose to brush it for the first couple of weeks." You look away and at the bed shyly because you feel a little silly telling him that you didn't look up how to take care of your new piercing.

"Do you like it?" he asks.

And you don't know. You hadn't really thought about it?

"I ... guess?" you ask. Like he's suppose to tell you what to think. You suppose that if he would tell you that you're supposed to love it, you probably actually would.

"You guess?" his mouth stops moving against your neck. He pulls back to look at you, and you're shocked breathless by his orange eyes. You don't know when he pulled his glasses off, but you stare unabashedly at them until he continues. "If you don't want it, you don't have to wear it."

You mind stumbles over itself trying to process that statement. When it catches up, you also realize that the expression in those orange eyes are concerned. Maybe a little irritated? They're so expressive. It doesn't surprise you that he wears shades all the time with how wide open those eyes are.

Dirk's still waiting for your answer, but you don't know what to tell him. You eyes find the cushion of the couch. "I ... I don't know if I like it or not." You sigh. You aren't really sure how to explain how you feel about all of this. You know that if you say you never thought about it before, he'll ask why you said yes to it. And that's a can of worms that you would very, very much like to keep closed. For now, at least. "I've only had it for one day, and so far my experiences with it are just a swollen tongue and, well ..." you stop to give him a quick look, "making out with it. And I guess making out with it is ... nice. But I guess I'm just not sold on it yet?"

You smile at him as flirty as you can. "But maybe you can sell me on it?"

He looks a little surprised, but just in his eyes. The rest of his expression is neutral. Then he gives you a small smile, but it goes fairly quickly into a wide grin on its own. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah ..." You lean up to say the word against his mouth, deliberately brushing lips with him as much as possible.

He kisses the side of your mouth. "Yeah?"

"Mm-hmm." He tries to kiss you fully on the mouth, but you duck away to lick the flat of your tongue and your barbell up his neck. You kiss his earlobe and lick the shell of his ear before whispering, "I want you to teach me to how to go down on you."

You feel everything on him freeze. You think that even his heart stops beating, he is so deathly still. Then he lets go of a noise that is halfway between a whine and a shaky breath. His hand on your shoulder tightens, then relaxes, before he pulls back.

You're so afraid that he's going to say no. You're afraid that he's going to be turned off by the offer, like how when you tried to touch him before, he didn't respond.

But when you sit back and catch his eyes, you know, you know that if you didn't already know you were in love with him, you would know it now. And you know that not wanting you isn't the case right now.

He looks ravenous, but shy at the same time, like he isn't sure how to feel about that statement. He had found his way into your lap sometime during that first kiss, straddling your waist, and now you can feel the beginning of an erection start to press against you.

Oh fuck. And now you've got one.

Even though he obviously likes the idea, you're still waiting for verbal confirmation. Because you never know with Dirk. You don't want to rush him, but your own problem is starting to really make itself know, and you realize that it's pressing itself right into Dirk's ass, and oh god, that's really pretty hot.

You lean forward and press a quick kiss to his bottom lip. "Yeah?"

He seems dazed as he licks his lip where you mouth just was, but then he nods quickly, and your stomach does some intense flips. Your afraid it's going to jump out your throat for how badly it's fluttering away.

"Yeah?" You ask again, because it seems a little surreal, but he keeps nodding and mumbles his own little, "Yeah."

"How do you ..." You try to ask, but it's hard to form words well with this much excitement. "Do you want to sit, and I can ...?"

For all the calculated finesse Dirk typically exudes, you can't help the small giggle you have when he stumbles a little as he gets off you in an excited rush and plops down next to you on the couch.

You wonder why he's so nervous. You'd always assumed he'd done this before with Jake, back when they dated. But maybe he's always been like this. Maybe he would tie Jake up and only please him, too?

You don't want to think about that.

You don't want to think about Jake.

You slide down between his legs and look up at him. He's following you with hooded eyes, a soft flush burning his pale and freckled skin. And you want to ask him if he's done this before, just to know, but then you'd know. You'd know that it would have been Jake's mouth on him, and you just ... you can't. So you tell him instead that it's your first time, even though you think he already knows.

He nods, closes his eyes, and opens them more focused on you.

He's already hard, and you can see that easily through his jeans. You figure you should just undo them, but you think there should be more ... foreplay for your foreplay. But you aren't sure what to do. You look back up at Dirk and you've never seen the look he's giving you now before. It's heated and burning with want, but it also has such a focus it makes you want to squirm a little under it. It also makes you want to kiss him. So you do, you climb up and press you mouth to his, not very heated, but reassuring.

He deepens it, running a hand through your hair and using the other to loop around your back and pull you into his lap. But you're getting distracted, and you have to make yourself stop. If you don't, if you let you or Dirk fall back into what's comfortable, you know you'll wind up tied to the bed, unable to touch or see Dirk. You want this so badly, so, so badly, to be able to do to Dirk what he can do to you so easily. You want to make him see stars and say your name, and god, you want to see him come.

So you pull back, close your eyes, and _breathe_.

"Relax," he tells your lips. Strangely enough, you do. The tension in your shoulders and your back loosens, and your fears about all of this don't go away completely, but they don't seem as bad. He pulls back from your mouth and presses a kiss to your ear. "I'll talk you through this," he whispers.

"Get on your knees."

The words are commandeering, and they shiver down your spine, and seize you, moving you without resistance. The next thing you know, you're staring up at him from between his knees. He's got his eyes fixed on you, and they're blown wide, black with thin rings of orange. You'll never, ever forget how gorgeous he looks right now.

"Unzip my pants."

You almost want to laugh, but you can't. You can't because your breath catches, and because your heart totally stutters a little, and you realize that, yeah, you can totally live with this set up. Totally. You don't waste time with the command, and once you have him unbuttoned, you get the jeans off completely with help from Dirk. He's sitting there in just the boxers and a tank shirt, now, and his erection is extremely obvious from under the thin fabric of his black and orange underwear.

"Mouth it through the boxers."

It's a concept that you didn't think of, but hearing it come from Dirk makes it sound delicious and dirty and you tongue is pressing the ball along the length of him through the cotton without hesitation. You fall into the ministrations surprisingly well, with a strange confidence arising from Dirk's words. In some corner of your mind that isn't focusing on Dirk's dick and your mouth, you know that it's stemming from the certainty that Dirk will enjoy whatever he tells you to do.

He runs a hand gently through your hair, before lightly knotting it in your hair at the back of your head. A low groan builds in his throat, quiet, like he's trying to keep it down. But that just won't do at all.

You take the initiative to wrap your mouth around the head and boxers, laving your tongue over the tip as much as possible. His hips buck in a small, almost nonexistent circle. You look up and see his eyes burning into yours.

"Fuck it." It takes your mind a couple of seconds to register that that wasn't a command. Instead he's using the hand that's still wrapped in your hair to pull you off of him, and it's not exactly the harsh treatment of your hair that causes you to grunt out. It's the suddenness, like being doused with cold water after a relaxing bath. You were happily muggy and sated licking and sucking at Dirk's boxers.

But then Dirk uses his other hand to pull himself out, hissing at the flesh-to-flesh contact, and stroking, almost unwittingly. He drops his head back and groans a relieved sigh, and the embarrassing whine that comes from your mouth is nothing in comparison, but it seems like Dirk enjoys it anyway. If the jut of his hips is anything to go by, at least.

You take a second to look at him for the first time. He's not really long or anything, maybe as long as you or a little shorter, even, but still you would assume average. You aren't really surprised to see his foreskin, since he did grow up entirely alone in the middle of the ocean. Removing skin from his penis probably never even crossed his mind. He teases it with his thumb, pulling it back away from the head, then letting go and repeating.

It's captivating and distracting, how beautiful he is. You almost forget what exactly you were doing on the floor in front of him. But then Dirk reminds you in this amazing, guttural voice.

"Start slow, just the tip."

It actually sounds like he might be pained, but you know the feeling so well. That sharp edge to the pleasure. It makes you seriously wonder at what Dirk has done before if he's already this far gone with so little prompt.

But you try not to linger because Dirk is, maybe subconsciously, maybe intentionally, pushing you toward his dick, and then it is literally in you face, so you fall back on running your barbell along the underside.

"Ohhh, _fuck_."

You watch him, after that. The way his eyes stay closed through most of it, but how he always looks right at, right _through_ you when he tells you what to do next. But you never look away from his face, framed by his now-messy hair and shiny with perspiration. Somewhere along the way you have to unzip your own jeans and take yourself in your hand because of the sight. And, oh your _gog_, because of the things he tells you to do, and the voice he tells you with.

To lick. To suck.

His hand moves you, too. It tells you where to be, what to do, even better than his voice can. Only once does he press you too hard, forces himself to deeply into your throat, and you accidentally gag around him. But you recover quick, not even needing to pull back, and he probably didn't even notice. He just kept pressing and talking.

To relax your throat. To take him deeper.

You can tell when he starts to get close. His commands start deteriorating into nonsense, exclamations, noise. It makes you dizzy to think that you're doing this to him, causing him to lose himself like this. Your hips begin to buck uncontrolled into your hand, and the moans that that causes makes Dirk's nonsense louder.

To oh fuck John. To _godd_. To swallow.

When it's done, and you've got a bitter taste in your mouth and mess in your hand, you lay your forehead against his knee and smile up at him crookedly. He's still got his head tilted back, breathing quick, deep gulps.

When he looks up, after a few moments where he got his breathing back to normal, you remember why you were okay with the blindfold in the first place.


	4. Revelations

**Chapter Summary: You were going to say something like "before you fuck me?" But that wouldn't be completely truthful. And maybe that hurts you a little more than you already did, breaks you a little more to almost admit it aloud. Dirk doesn't answer you, just watches as you look away, then walks out the door, closing it softly behind him.**

**Warning: feelings jams, and very brief mentions of sex**

* * *

You sigh something into Dirk's ear when you come into his hand, licking your barbell against the shell of his ear. You're a little preoccupied, eyes screwed shut under the blindfold, heels digging into the mattress, nails biting at your own wrists where you grab for any sort of purchase on reality. What you say exactly is a little lost on you.

The come down is satisfyingly slow and muddy, and it takes you maybe a full minute to remember you're still tied up.

"Dirk?" you ask a softly to the loudly quiet room. He shifts above you, and you can feel the weight he puts on his elbow dip and sway the bed. His fingers brush against your forehead and then you can see the gray, muted tones of his face. "You okay?"

Dirk's glasses are still on. He hasn't taken them off in front of you in a week. But you can make out how his brow ceases slightly in the middle, the slight furrow at each eyebrow, above the glasses.

You wonder briefly what you said when you came.

"M'fine." He mumbles this, lowly and barely audible, before he slides away from you to undo the ties on your arms.

"Okay," you mumble back, lifting your arms above you to get the feeling back into them. "If you say so."

The rest of the ritual is painfully silent: you slowly falling asleep as he wipes clean the tools he used on you. That's how you've started thinking of this, these nights. Rituals. You've fallen into a sort of pattern, and unspoken tradition. Not so much with the sex, Dirk takes care to try something new every time, but you have noticed the role that you especially fall into. From the time you enter your room, it's like your just filling in the steps.

You've started coming back to your room later and later. Dirk is always there before, sitting in the dark with the door cracked open. You don't exactly dread coming back to your room, to this, but if you're being honest, it's lost a huge portion of its thrill. You think you know why, too. You can't help but notice that you've already figured him out.

He's not, in any way shape or form, in love with you. You're just a toy.

And what's worse is that you didn't fall _out_ of love with him when you realized. You only felt hurt, and a little broken. But it didn't, you don't know, break you down. You still felt a tiny thrill every time he puts the blindfold on you. It makes you feel a little sick to wonder what, if anything, he felt for you as you sunk deep into wherever you had fallen, and to wonder what exactly makes you let him back into your room and your bed.

And the best part, the absolute best and worst and excruciating part, is that you only had to see the disappointment on his face when he looked at you after you had first made him come. Like he regretted seeing your face. Like it wasn't you he expected to see.

He finishes with the toys and putting them in the box, and you're all but snoring, eyes closed and breathing deeply. You're just waiting for the last click of the door behind him. But you don't hear it, and you think you might already be asleep, but instead you open your eyes to see him stopped in front of the closed door with his hand frozen on door. The direction of his glasses faces the door, but you can see his closed eyes past the profile of glasses.

"Dirk?" you mumble, and it's nothing but sleepy concern.

He blinks, and then points his shades at you. "Yeah?"

"You 'kay?"

He doesn't change in the few seconds you wait for his answer; he's perfectly still except for the shallow, slow breaths you barely even register.

"Yeah. I think so."

And you catch that "think" like its the fucking winning ball, go team Fucked Up Relationships, but your sitting up before the thick fog of sleep is even completely dispersed. "You think ...?"

You give him time to answer, seconds, maybe even a minute or two, but he's still the ever-stoic Mr. CoolGuy statue, and he never talks on his own. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not ... right now."

He makes to leave, finishes turning the handle, but you stop him, a little rashly angry. "When, then? Do you actually want to say a few words to me before yo- ... Before ..."

You were going to say something like "before you fuck me?" But that wouldn't be completely truthful. And maybe that hurts you a little more than you already did, breaks you a little more to admit it almost aloud. Dirk doesn't answer you, just watches as you look away, then walks out the door, closing it softly behind him.

You let him.

**&break&**

You sleep in as long as you can the next day. You don't even pay attention to the time, and the room on the meteor is always dark without the lights on. Even when you can't even pretend to sleep, when you're too awake, you just lie there, staring at the tile in front of your closet. You think it must be about 1 in the afternoon, now, and you don't really care.

Someone knocks at your door, but you ignore it in favor of continuing to stare at nothing. But it gets louder, then the door just opens and you wonder why you didn't think to lock the door before you decided to do nothing.

Dave, the human or god or whatever version of Dave, not the one who's still stuck in his pubescent glory and covered in bright orange feathers, comes bursting into the room. You almost actually sound the "what the _fuck_?" that blares across your head, but you remember that you decided not to do anything today.

"Yo. Douche. What in all that is blazing and glorious are you doing?"

You wonder why Jade isn't here, either stopping Dave from doing whatever bad idea he thinks he's doing to help. Or maybe she put him up to this? Or maybe they aren't as joined at the hip as you thought they were originally, and they do have periods of time where they act independently from one another.

"Dude. What is going on with you lately?" He asks it plainly, and again your Strider-senses are tingling. It makes you look directly at his glasses. "You aren't cool anymore. And you were pretty uncool to begin with, so this is like, depressingly loser-ish.

"You don't hang out with either Jade or me ever, and Jade's like your sister-cousin thing. I know that both of you Egharlerts think I don't notice anything, but dude, she's hurt by how much you've changed. And that's all on you, dude. So what's going on with you?"

He walked in while he was talking, and sat on your bed. He pokes you hard in the side with the last "you" and remains pointedly silent.

"It's not your business, Dave."

"Dude, we all became each other's business the day a thousand fucking meteors came crashing down in a version of the worst fucking birthday present ever."

You think about that. "Does it ever bother you to think that we were the fuck ups?"

His entire face blinks metephorically, blank and processing. "What? Like, with sBurb?"

"Yeah. And no. And I don't know. We screwed ourselves over. And the Alteranian Trolls. And we even somehow managed to fuck over our kids-slash-guardians."

"But Roxy and Dirk and them won the game?"

"But they didn't get the _prize_."

He thinks about that for a couple of seconds. "This isn't really what you're being a little shit about, is it? That we cosmically and royally fucked over three different universes? This is about Dirk."

"It's about everything, Dave." You mumble it into the pillow as you bury your face in it. "What are we even doing here, Dave? Living in the ruins of a finished game, in some dead worlds, with nothing but skeletons and depressing little chess people for company."

"I don't know, John. What do you propose?"

You don't even know. You're just angry. And sad. But most of all angry as fuck. And you don't know if there is even anything that you can do about it. You tell Dave all of this.

"Did you know," he asks in the a few moments of silence after that outburst, "that we all feel the same way? It's not just you. Jade and me and Rose, we've all talked about this before. We sort of thought that you had found your motivation, though."

"My motivation?" You find yourself sitting up under the sheets, and you're still a naked mess, so you're careful to stay as covered up as possible, but you wrap your arms around you legs and bring them to your chest.

"You know, whatever it is that gets you moving in the morning, even though we really don't have reasons to get up. We all thought, all saw, that you had Dirk, and so we just let you do your own thing while the rest of us had nightmares about Earth."

"You had nightmares?"

"Oh, fuck, yes. You know, you three weren't my whole life before we got pulled into this mess." He sits back against the wall and pulls off his shades to rub at his eyes. "There was this girl, when I was like eleven or twelve, I don't even remember now, but she had this huge crush on me. It was soo obvious. To everyone else. I never knew until she came up to me and told me that she liked me and then kissed me on the lips. And that was my first kiss."

You guess you didn't really think about everyone else's lives. You ... had always been ... awkward. It was hard for you to make friends in person, especially when you started middle school and friendships were so much more than playing tag and laughing at not-even-that-funny stuff. You had a couple of kids, boys that were just as awkward as you and had some similar interests, that you would hang out with at school, and you think you would hang with them some times out side of school, but ... you haven't really thought of them in the past five years.

You think about them now. You only remember their first names, and maybe that one kid had the last name Ziggiler or Zagger or something really uncommon? You guess ... they all died. Like, not just ceased to exist, but actually died in a fire or was crushed by a meteor or something. Or, maybe even worse, they lived through that somehow, and had to deal with whatever came after that.

It's a little crushing, to think of what could have happened to you if you hadn't been some strange prodigal child, and you just want to lay back down and close your eyes and cease to exist yourself.

"What happened after she kissed you?"

"She ran away. We were sort of friends after that, but we mostly just saw each other at school. "

"That was it?"

"That was it. I was picked on by some of my friends for it, but then it became cool to have girls want to kiss you, and they just all forgot about it. But I never forgot that kiss."

"Did you have a lot of friends in Texas?"

"Sort of. I was never really close with any of them, not like I was with you. But yeah, I was surprisingly popular."

"Surprisingly?" You laugh a little. "You were, like, the coolest kid I knew."

He just gives you a little look, and you're pretty unused to the red, but you don't react. "I guess pretending that you're the coolest kid you know actually makes you the coolest kid you know. But really? I was nothing but annoying and dumb. And hell, I still am sometimes."

You laugh again, a slow little giggle. You guess that you're eighteen and you still giggle should be an issue, but you don't care one teensy little fuck right now. "Yeah, you are."

"So, man, what is going on with you right now?"

Like you know. You tell him everything you feel you can, obviously not being too detailed about what you and Dirk do practically every night. But you tell him that you love him, and that you always knew so resoundingly that it was love, not lust, because lust doesn't feel like this. And you tell him about how he wouldn't let you touch him really, and how it should have been really obvious, so, so obviously one-sided, and that this love was completely unfounded, and you still have no idea what you're doing in love with him. And you tell him that you know just as strongly that you know you love him, that you know he doesn't love you back.

And when you're done, and you even started crying, and you're curled up again under the sheets, Dave just lets you sniffle yourself calm. Then he says, "We should have warned you."


End file.
